The present invention provides an improvement over traditional automatic telephone dialers by providing a remotely programmable interface device for screening and routing outgoing calls from a telephone or facsimile machine and executing a series of pre-programmed functions based on the outgoing dialed sequences.
Other telephone dialers are known in the art. In general, an autodialer is a device that is used to re-route telephone calls to provide customers with call routing other than their standard carrier normally provides.
Since the beginning of the telephone de-regulation, users have been given the opportunity to select long distance and local carriers for their telephone service. Often a user is required to dial a carder access code (CAC) to access a particular carder other than a default carder (one of the "Baby-Bell" companies). In order to do so, the user generally has to access the ultimate carder by dialing in a particular access code prior to the dialing of the desired local or long distance telephone number. In this way, the Local Exchange Carder will route the particular long distance or local call to the proper carrier as designated by the particular user. However, in order to access this designated carrier, a number of bits or digits of an access code is required to be dialed for each and every long distance or local call which is desired to be carded by this alternate carder. These manual iterations are time consuming and frustrating to numerous end users, who often make use of the default carrier based on this "nuisance" factor.
Similarly, many communications customers make use of telephone services for rerouting of telephone and facsimile traffic. In order to utilize these services, a user is required to access the service, often resulting in a user entering manual dial sequences and access codes much the same as in designating an alternate carder. Thereafter, the user provides directions to the service as to their particular communications needs, again often resulting in more complicated dial sequences or verbal instructions. Any improvement to the access routines for utilizing these services would add to the overall user satisfaction with such designated telephone communication services.